


Time

by pprfaith



Category: Wonder Woman (2017)
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, Gods, Immediate Aftermath, Major character death - Freeform, Post Movie, Reaction Snippet, Snippet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-25
Updated: 2018-12-25
Packaged: 2019-09-27 08:22:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 466
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17158577
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pprfaith/pseuds/pprfaith
Summary: How do gods tell time?





	Time

**Author's Note:**

> Written in 2017, right after seeing the movie for the first time. First posted on tumblr.

+

It’s to tell time, he explains and you stare at him, at his skin and his scars and his body, at his _watch_ , at his foreign clothes and bright eyes and you don’t understand it at all.

A mere two weeks later, you stand on a barren, burning battlefield, that same watch in hand and him nothing but ashes scattering down on the dead and you cry.

+

You are three thousand years old when Steve Trevor comes falling out of the sky. 

He looks older than you, but when you ask, he tells you he is almost thirty-five. 

From your mother’s stories you know that is half a human lifetime. In the streets of London you see, for the first time in your life, a baby, an old man. You see time at work on human skin and flesh and bone. You see how it ravages, how to steals.

Once, you spent eighty years under Penthesilea’s tutelage, learning the bow. Before that, you had a fight with Althea over some silly thing and didn’t speak for almost four decades. 

Longer than Steve has been alive. 

Of course they need little pieces of metal to tell them when to eat and sleep and work because they have so little time that every second matters. 

Every single one. 

You dance with him in the village square in Veld surrounded by gladdened, laughing people and less than a day later, there is only death in that very same spot. 

Time.

You understand it now. 

_I wish we had more_ , Steve says, _I love you_ , Steve says, and flies into the sky and his seconds tick, tick, tick past and then – 

You understand it now. 

+

For the longest time, you watch the little stick, the one Samir tells you is the hour hand, move. You watch it as Chief goes to find you a vehicle, as Charlie gently lays a great coat over your bare shoulders, as you drive and drive and drive, back behind friendly lines. 

You watch it, counting out minutes under your breath. 

You wonder how old Ares was. You wonder if he knew. 

You wonder about the way gods tell time, and realize that they do it exactly like this, because this is how you do it and you are the last of the gods. 

Youngest and final and last. 

God and godkiller, weapon and woman and you tell time by the distance growing between you and the place where Steve Trevor died. 

You hold onto his watch and wonder how long it will tick, tick, tick, wonder where all the time he should have yet had went when he died.

Was Ares lonely, these past three thousand years?

Did he keep a watch? Did he know - 

Come on, Diana, Chief says, it’s time to go.

+


End file.
